E-text prepared by Marilynda Fraser-Cunliffe, Jeannie Howse,
and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
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Austin and His
Friends
BY
FREDERIC H. BALFOUR
AUTHOR OF
"THE EXPIATION OF EUGENE," ETC.
LONDON
GREENING & CO., LTD.
1906
Table of Contents
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The old-fashioned ghost-story was always terrifying and ghastly;something that made people afraid to go to bed, or to look over theirshoulders, or to enter a room in the dark. It dealt with apparitionsin a white sheet, and clanking chains, and dreadful faces that peeredout from behind the window curtains in a haunted chamber. And the moreblood-curdling it was, the more keenly people enjoyed it—until theywere left alone, and then they were apt to wish that they had beenreading Robinson Crusoe or Alison's History of Europe instead. Now thepresent book embodies an attempt to write a cheerful ghost-story; astory in which the ghostly element is of a friendly and pleasantcharacter, and sheds a sense of happiness and sunshine over the entirelife of the ghost-seer. Whether the author has succeeded in doing sowill be for his readers to decide. It is only necessary to add that hehas not introduced a single supernormal incident that has not occurredand been authenticated in the recorded experiences of persons latelyor still alive.
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